PyCon 2015

Satellite data for everyone

Chris Waigl gave an excellent talk on satellite imagery, the freely available data, how to work with it and the python tools that enable that work.

Seeing what others are able to do with data like this inevitably inspires new ideas.

I am planning to take a look at what imagery is available for Bermuda over the period of the hurricanes Fay and Gonzalo that hit the island separated only by six days.

There will definitely be good before and after imagery, with luck there will also be some usable images from the six day period between the storms.

The usual suspects

The python community has some speakers that are very skilled at presenting complex ideas in an entertaining and informative way. They are always worth looking out for. If you are new at PyCon, ask others what talks they are going to, it will help you be in the right room for you.

Oh, and don't panic, pretty much all talks are recorded and available online (youtube seems to have replaced PyVideo here).

This year, for me, it was the three B's: Beazely, Bernhart and Batchelder.

Gary Bernhardt

Gary Bernhardt followed up his Rise and fall of javascript from last year with a closing keynote motivated by Donald Rumsfeld's known-unknowns speech. He talked about beliefs programmers have, that really have an underlying belief driving them. Discovering that underlying belief is the key to being able to discuss these ideas with others that have differing views. He gave an example along these lines.

Python needs tests because it does not have static typing

I don't need tests because I have types

Gary pointed out that these two statements cannot both be true, unless tests are somehow the same as types and eloquently exposed the underlying beliefs behind these statements.

Not all Python

PyCon is by no means all python.

There were talks on Advanced Git, ethics, inclusivity, freedom, the brokenness of TLS (https).

Not all talks

The Expo Hall where conference sponsors had their booths also served as the breakfast and lunch place. As per last year, I found the Expo Hall a valuable place to spend time.

The vast majority of sponsors booths are run by techies, not marketting droids and they are great place to find others with similar interests.

Meal times give an opportunity to sit at a random table and meet others and share ideas.

MAGIC

I have been interested in the MAGIC center at Rochester Institute of Technology since hearing Remy DeCausemaker speak about it last year.

MAGIC allows students to take a minor in Open Source.

Lightning talks

Lightning talks are always fun, often at the end of the day. Speakers have precisely 5 minutes to talk. If you want to give a talk, just sign up on the board. These are usually over-subscribed.

Poster Sessions

Sunday morning the expo hall switched into a combined jobs fair and poster sessions. The poster sessions were small booths where people created posters relating to projects and ideas they are working on.

You can then wander around and talk to people working on ideas you are also interested in. These complement the talks in that it gives a chance for more detailed discussion with the people running the projects.

Live captioning

Most of the talks had live captioning. This captioning was remarkably good with essentially real time display. It even coped well with speakers that added a bit of French.

Keynotes

Jacob Kaplan-Moss's keynote reflected the focus on inclusivity in the python community. He talked about how programmers are all perceived either to rock or suck. In short we are led to believe that the distribution of programming abilities is essentially an upside down bell-curve.

Jacob pointed out the absurdity of this perception and also its very damaging consequences. The reality is that programming ability, like most attributes, should follow a normal distribution, hence the vast majority of programmers are just average or as Jacob described himself, I am a mediocre programmer.

The python community is full of people who use python in order to get other stuff done in a very wide range of activities. It is widely used in science, finance, education and a plethora of other areas.

As such, you will often hear pythonistas say, "I am not a real programmer". I would include myself in this bracket, despite having spent my entire working career building software of one sort or another. But that software has always been a means to an end.

I believe my reality is closer to being good enough at quite a lot of things and having the capacity to become good enough at anything I am passionate enough about to pursue.

But to get there you have to deal with the little hater. The voice that eats away at you saying, "You suck at this". Many software communities will confirm this belief for you. The python community is trying to be different.

By insisting that all programmers rock we are excluding the vast majority of programmers from that activity. This causes angst for those already pursuing at the activity and dramatically increases the barrier to entry. The result is a smaller, less diverse, less interesting and less effective community.

Thanks Jacob for a truly inspiring talk. Thanks also to the python community for recognising and trying to address this issue.

Sprinting

My flight home was not until Monday evening, so I was able to attend the first day of code sprints.

Once the conference closed on Sunday afternoon, sprint leaders were given a couple of minutes to talk about what they would be working on.

There was then an introductory session organised, primarily aimed at people new to sprinting, but also of great benefit to more experienced sprinters.

There were people giving introductions to git, virtualenv, virtualbox, testing in python, http and more. Each introduction was repeated 3 times in 15 minute sessions. Hence, everyone could listed to three subjects of there choice.

I found this a useful session to fill in some gaps in my knowledge and also to get to know some of the other sprinters.

PyCon videos

If this blog post has sparked your interest in PyCon I would encourage you to watch some videos from the talks. Just go to youtube and search for PyCon 2015. See the schedule if you want to see the full list of talks.

The state of the python

One of the reasons I like to attend PyCon is that you get a very good feel for where the language and community is currently placed, what projects are being widely used, what projects are up and coming and generally where the community is heading.

I have watched PyCon grow and be delighted that it has not lost the excitement and sheer inspiration it always generates.

The community is stronger than ever and making great efforts to be more inclusive and accessible.

Summary

Another wonderful conference that has, as always, generated a lot of exciting ideas for me to pursue.